Stellaris allows many players if you like those types of games. Only the host needs dlc if you want to pool your cash and buy some. But yeah it can be expensive.
Since you mention Paradox titles, I’d add Crusader Kings III, Europa Universalis IV, and/or Hearts of Iron 4. Same rules apply for those games’ DLC, as well.
Streets of Rogue and Vagante are challenging roguelikes that scale effortlessly for co-op of various numbers of players. There's also Mercenary Kings, which I admit I enjoyed more than most, but it's like the cross section of Mega Man action with Monster Hunter structure. Much more recently, Baldur's Gate 3 probably hits its sweet spot at 3 human players, since you want to have an NPC slot around in your party of 4 for the story quests that are relevant to that NPC.
I'd just like to provide extra emphasis on Towerfall. One of the GOAT local multiplayer games and only gets better with a third, much like Smash Brothers, Power Stone, etc.
Unreal Tournament 2004, with few players it turns its normal frantic and fast paced gameplay into a suspensfull slower experience which is awesome.
I think you can get it on the internet archive as it stopped being sold on gog and steam this spring.
OpenRA - Do you remember the old classic series Command & Conquer ?
OpenRA takes the old original game, updates the controls to modern RTS controls, add new ai to play against, add support for modern resolutions and adds a good internet multiplayer system, all of this for free!
That’s another amazing part about the Seamless Co-op Mod. You can completely turn off invasions if you want. It makes the game so much more playable if you just want to play with friends and not have your progress set back by every try-hard who gets off by ruining other people’s fun.
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